Before Star Wars, my modules worked much like a standard Knights of the Dinner Table session. The PCs would be a group of strangers who united under some nebulous pretext. We’d find a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. We’d avoid the traps, kill the monsters and take their stuff. Along the way the PCs would try to outdo each other in carnage. Crits were politely applauded, fumbles would be met with mocking scorn. I’ll admit it was fun and besides, I had no idea there was any other way to play.

The Star Wars game I walked into was a new kind of beast. The GM ran it like a movie. He had a soundtrack, celebrity portraits for NPCS and detailed maps that were drawn to look like something out of  an official supplement. What truly stood out however, was his pacing. He kept the game moving. Our characters ran from one scene to the next at breakneck speed. He didn’t give us time to argue rules. We didn’t measure out 5 foot blocks on dungeon maps in order to calculate the volume of our grenade explosions – we threw and prayed. An action round involved more than move, hit and damage. We had to weave through traffic, leap across rooftops and dodge explosions in the thick of the fight. The GM seemed intent on using the universe to kill our characters. We loved it.

The players in this group were amazing. Something happened with them that I had never seen before. Near the start of the first session our characters had to chase down a rebel leader on a monorail. It was leaving the station when we arrived. Every character but mine succeeded on the roll to jump on the train. My ended up clinging to the side for dear life. In my old group she would have just died. Everyone would laugh and the game would continue while I found a new sheet. This time, without hesitation, a player informed the GM that his character was smashing through the window, grabbing my character, and pulling her in. I was floored by the idea of a party where PCs looked out for each other. Of course, the GM had given us a good in-character reason to work together form the start. We were an Imperial Special Ops team who had worked together for years.

Needless to say, it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

This has coloured how I run my games since and it’s also heavily influenced how I’ve written Knights of the Hidden Sun. I want my game to play like a movie. I want Knights to look out for each other, and I’ve designed tools to help other GMs do this:

• I’ve added a Hazard System to the Ready 2 Run core rules (used in Aeternal Legends) so that characters can jump through windows, pull innocent civilians from harm and run through an exploding dreadnought in the midst of combat.
• Characters start the game knowing each other; they’ve trained together for five years before starting their first mission.
• The reward system is designed to encourage teamwork, not  showboating. Of one person does something cool, everyone wins.

If you can easily run this game like a high-octane action flick then I’ll consider this project a success.

I have to admit something. I really love games that blur the lines a bit. If you’re of an age, you’ll remember Over the Edge. That game had a suggested scenario that involved the characters finding out that they were the protagonists in an imagined fictional world. It then had them meeting first the GM, then the other players. Lots of people pointed out how this required the right players to be a lot of fun. I’m pretty much the textbook example of a “right player”. It jumps straight to what I want: a way to become invested in the game as a player on the meta-level of being a player, in addition to the actions of my character. I want my expectations, and the expectations of everyone at the table, to help shape the world.

This is not a revolutionary idea per se. FATE-based games like Spirit of the Century, Starblazer Adventures, and Diaspora use Aspects, player-defined traits that describe both characters and setting elements. Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies has the players working together to build the setting. Any game with freeform traits—such as Unknown Armies—allows a player to say to the GM “This is what I want to see” simply by naming those traits. Just about every section of GM advice worth it’s salt includes a section pointing out that it’s not just the GM’s game; it belongs to everyone.

That’s not to say that the GM must constantly bow to the whims of the other players, or that the characters can never fail. This is a fallacy that Malcolm’s been happily tearing to shreds in his GM as God entries here. The GM is God, but God must listen to his clergy occasionally.

Few games—in fact, I’m hard-pressed to name any, though I’m sure I’m wrong—have an in-setting explanation for why two groups’ stories can be entirely different in tone and theme and yet take place in the same game. If you’re running a World of Darkness game inspired by the works of Kelly Armstrong it’s going to look a lot different to one that’s Raymond Chandler with wizards. Both games are World of Darkness games, but neither has a reason for the other also being possible.

I like the idea of a group’s shared expectations having some impact on the game-world. It’s a powerful thing, and a resource that more groups should tap. So in Æternal Legends, we have the all-pervading magic. It suffuses the world. In theory, magic shapes the world—and magic is in turn shaped by those Legends who have ascended to the Source.

In practice, the tides of magic are shaped by the players. Magic is the in-setting way of saying: “It’s something that the group finds cool, so stop worrying and enjoy the ride.” Every game, without exception, has bits that make no sense. They exist purely to further the type of game that the writers want to write, and that players want to play. In Æternal Legends, that’s an explicit facet of the setting.

And because I’ve been thinking about Spheres again on and off, this leads me to a slight realisation. A Legend who reaches the Crown can sublime into magic rather than turning back; effectively becoming part of the magical field. Now, for groups who find this sort of meta-hacking interesting, that effectively gives the old character as much direct authorial control over the story as the players. And now that he’s on the meta-level, the character’s desires may not mesh with those of his player any more…

In this way, a long-running (or high-powered) Æternal Legends game may well take the route first outlined in Over the Edge, perhaps following a similar path to the hero in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. It’s an interesting thought-experiment, if nothing else.

-Stew

Malcolm’s already covered three great games to buy with Æternal Legends from Lulu. He’s also written a great elevator pitch in Five Reasons to Play the Game. I’m not going to go over that ground again.

Instead, let’s have a bit of game design. One thing that I really don’t want to let go of is the idea that the core rulebook is king. I inherited that idea from working on the World of Darkness games, where each supplement has to work just fine with only the corebook. To that end, I don’t want supplements that contradict the corebook. We’ve all seen them; the writer comes up with something new and better, and what’s said in the main book no longer matters. Sod that.

Supplements are supplemental. They work best (especially for indie games) as collections of options. Hence Fight Like a Legend has a bunch of options focused on combat: a simple combat system, new injury systems, and a way to use the combat systems for social conflict. You don’t need any of these systems, but they let you tailor the game to your own preferences.

Spheres is much the same. It’s got a bunch of options to make Spheres work the way you want them to. Maybe you want Legends to increase in power as they gain ranks in the Sphere? Or maybe you want to make the Spheres more explicitly magical? Both options are right there for you. Sphere Guilds and Shells both get extrapolated from the their sidebars in the corebook, and the Higher Spheres get full write-ups. Whatever role you want Spheres to play in your game, this supplement has you covered.

This is the one defining trait running through everything I write for Æternal Legends. I’m not defining more and more of the world with each release. Far from it; I’m doing my best to tailor the game to your group. Because this isn’t a game for reading; it’s a game for playing. Get some people around a table and throw some dice!

-Stew

Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium

This is a violent, sleazy splatterpunk epic. Everybody’s a bit tougher than human but that just let’s ‘em bleed a little longer. The system uses a straightforward dice pool mechanic that just takes a few minutes to pick up, but the real charm of the game lies in its inventive demons and the way it’s easy to build basic stories and boot characters right into the action. The game’s only drawback is the fact that it’s background’s a bit sparse for long term play, but the supplements correct that.

MSG(tm) Executive Edition

MSG is Wood Ingham’s corporate dystopia, remarkably relevant in the way it models relationships that exist now, but merely stretches them to the point where you can satirize them “safely.” Otherwise, you might be left with rather savage self-criticism, but that can come later, after you’ve screwed over each other in search of security, raw power and the extraordinarily fuzzy line between the two.

Reign

Consider making Reign your alternate go-to fantasy RPG. The One Roll Engine System runs smoothly enough to support any core fantasy gaming you feel like doing with remarkable efficiency. Much has been said about the Company (big-ish organization) rules, but I think these are merely serviceable, while the core RPG concepts as presented here are remarkably refined. This game also has one of the better discussions of magic systems in RPGs (even though I don’t agree with it 100%, I think people fiddling with magic in a game should read it) and a world presented in digestible chunks, making it much simpler to take away basic ideas and cool bits.

Honorable Mention: RedBrick’s Catalog(s)

For God’s sakes people, you can buy Blue Planet, Earthdawn and Fading Suns from them! What the hell are you waiting for? All great games. Look ‘em up online to see why. EDIT: CORRECTION.  Sadly, you have to buy everything but Fading Suns through Mongoose now, and that company doesn’t deserve a cent of your money.

Funny thing: Sometimes “accessible” is hard to sell. Why get another game with elves? Good question. I’m not big on sale spiels, so this is something of a necessary evil – but hell, I’m going to tell you what I think Stew’s game brings to the table:

Being Human Means Something

In Æternal Legends being a regular human and not an Elf, Dwarf or Gnome means something aside from you being the “generic guy.” Humanity has a twofold mystical purpose. Humans are Lords of Beasts, charged with being the ultimate custodians of the natural world. They also have sole access to the Foundation Sphere: the power that preserves communities and raises armies. A human Legend can grow the claws of a tiger or sing up a revolution. They may be adaptable, but they aren’t the “none of the above” people.

Heroism is Enlightenment

This is a biggie. Being a Legend (a typical PC) in the game makes you a hero, but not just in the “You get special effects and nifty fight choreography” sense (though you do get those). Heroic ability is governed by a Sphere, inspired by the way the Sephiroth are used in the Western Magical Tradition (see Alan Moore’s Promethea for a comic book treatment and an inspiration for the game). Legends walk the Spheres to enlightenment – but that enlightenment has trials drawn from classic, heroic fantasy. When the Dark Lord arrives, he represents an internal, spiritual threshold and a material challenge, waiting in a tower or maze.

Intuitive Essentials, Not Fiddly Details

The game is easy to play for a couple of reasons. Character creation is lightning fast – five minutes a PC once you have it down. The real beauty of it is the way Stew decided early on that he wasn’t going to write down big, fine-grained lists of powers. The freeform magic system asks if your spell is Minor, Significant or Major, gives you the tools to build a spell and lets you run with it. Spheres are plugins for core game traits that anyone can understand shortly after reading the relevant passages. Now there is a tactical, resource-based combat system in there too, but that’s because the game is all about only doing what’s necessary to play around the game’s loose focus. It’s action-oriented, so that gets a more detailed tool. Similarly, magic isn’t about oodles of spell levels, but it does provide systems for the sort of stylish, off the cuff spellwork Stew felt was at the heart of the setting. Read, make characters and go.

Screw Plausibility: The Secret World is Big and Cool

Stew and I have both worked on tones of World of Darkness stuff. We both wanted a game that took the hidden world concept in another, more freewheeling direction. So in Æternal Legends one person in 20 is supernatural – and no, nobody else knows. Yes, we do have a magical veil of ignorance to keep the real world around but here’s the truth: It’s like that because enormous secret nations of troll Mafiosi, gnomes selling clockwork netbooks and wizard superspies kicks ass, and we basically tell you to roll with it the way you would the stuff in Hellboy II or the Harry Potter novels. Stew’s secret world is big an exuberant, not something cringing in the shadows.

Clichés Kick Ass

Elves are tricky. People either expect the Generic Elf, or some tortured reason why “our elves are different.” (They have spikes in their heads! They only live for five years!) Stew decided to go with “Hey, remember why you think elves are awesome?” So elves carry a divine mark chosen by the player, but there’s nothing wrong with your basic High Elf (like our signature character Lydia, who graces the book’s cover). Your vision of the elf counts.

Stew (and later myself, as developer) went through lots of fantasy tropes and decided that instead of rebelling against them or thoughtlessly tossing them in, he’d make them as meaningful as possible, but leave room for player and GM customization. Instead of guffawing at the idea of meeting a wizard in a tavern, we made the most powerful wizards (humans) the kinds of guys who can plan a caper in a tavern (because humans have sole access to the social Sphere of Foundation). Instead of making the ultimate Dark Lord the generic fallout of a creation myth, Stew made Da’ath the foe that arises when a hero stands at the threshold of uncertain places in her own soul.

These aren’t all the reasons why I love this game, and why I’m proud to have published it. Æternal Legends wasn’t designed to fit an elevator pitch, and I didn’t pick it for a single gimmick. Need more info from third parties? Try Stew’s reviews page (at his site). It’s about thinking big, not being afraid to find new value in the familiar, but still being brave enough to go beyond – to challenge the Dark. Seriously.

What about that relaunch? We’re offering the Æternal Legends PDF for FREE via RPGNow from now until around the end of Gen Con. Plus, if you download the free PDF you’ll be able to order the print version from Lulu for only $15.95 — 11 buck off the normal $26.95 price!

A World of Magic

Æternal Legends games take place in our world. The Unaware are the people you pass on the street or stand next to on the subway. The Aware see the world differently. The car mechanic at the end of the block is really a musclebound dwarf. His assistant is a craft-wise gnome. One of the college dropouts at the bar is a powerful wizard, trawling for guardians and apprentices between drinks. He’s just recruited the woman at the stool next to him. She decided it was better to be a Legendary hero than a database administrator.

The Unaware can’t see real magic. To them, the Clades are just eccentric strangers. Sorcery is coincidence and superstition instead of the boiling blood of Creation. Legends usually fall right off their radar. It’s not that the Unaware can’t see or interact with Legends, but something stops them from caring too much if an elf breaks into a corporate headquarters or a goblin steals somebody else’s car.

Magic

Magic is self-belief; being true to yourself in the face of adversity is the key to raw power. Knowing who you really are is the first step toward shaping magical world. Without that knowledge, you can’t even perceive the magic – you’re Unaware. With it, you can work miracles. While Legends are the most powerful Aware, they’re not the only ones who can summon flames or call lightning from a clear sky. Mine-knockers and alley witches populate the secret world, satisfying the same needs as mundane doctors and labourers.

Legends hone their magical natures by taking on a Sphere: an archetypal role that fits their beliefs. A Legend who wants to keep his family or neighbourhood safe joins the Sphere of Strength; a thinker who wants to know more about his Legendary state assumes the Sphere of Splendour. Legends join one of six Spheres at first, but some move on to even higher callings.

Different Eyes

A gang of goblins shows off to new members on the streets of Brooklyn. The gang’s boss is a sorcerer who wants to make her mark as a big player. She turns vandalism into murder and with a snarl, throws a bolt of fire at a passing dwarf.

An Unaware shop clerk strides by a gang hanging out on a street corner, keeping his eyes forward as he counts the seconds until he’ll be late back from his lunch break. One thug shouts and gestures in indecipherable slang. Suddenly, a stocky man across the road screams and falls. The clerk glances back. Was some kind of fit? A heart attack? Only timing links the gang to the collapse – even if the fireball passed right through the clerk.

One of the Aware – a gnome barman on his way to work – sees the new wizard on the block and instinctively ducks back. Summoning fire in broad daylight isn’t the smartest thing for the gang to do, but getting mixed up would make him a target.

A Legend sees the attack. She pulls the dwarf to safety, checks him over and turns her attention to his attackers. The goblins pull their weapons but they’ve already lost. This is the Legend’s turf, and she vowed to keep it safe.

Adventure

Legends eat, drink and breathe adventure. Whether they plot to save a local hero from falling to the Dark or face the goblin hordes of a Dark Lord intent on taking their city, no Legend leads a quiet life. Fortunately, there’s no lack of magical equipment to help them, from flaming swords to shotguns of dragon slaying. They walk to hidden, magical places to find strange creatures, solve ancient riddles, and progress on their personal journeys.

The magic that compels a Legend to a life on the edge also shields her from some of the consequences. The Unaware tend to ignore Legends. This even applies to adventurers kitted out in weapons and armour. When there are too many witnesses or extremely dogged, suspicious Unaware investigators, the Ministry of Administrative Affairs takes interest. The Ministry hides inside government departments, working in areas that Unaware governments scarcely imagine. Different departments cover everything from taxes and licensing for dangerous magic items to covering up the weirder things that even the Unaware might see. The Ministry is often ill-disposed toward Legends who can’t exercise the most basic discretion, and have Legends on hand to enforce their policies, if need be.

To kick things off, we’re offering a PDF of the core book for free via RPGNow. Furthermore, anyone who downloads the PDF will get an $11 print edition discount from Lulu.com by following a special link in the free PDF. This drops the core book’s print price from $26.95 to $15.95.

I’m talking about the movement to return to earlier versions of D&D. I’ve long been interested in older versions of games, particularly elements that fall by the wayside as design trends change. I’m also skeptical of the notion that games get objectively “better.” When OSRIC came out I even released some short supplements for it. They sell okay.

But I think the Old School is going down a bad path where it is not only becoming insular and less of a contributor to the health of the hobby, but is actually squandering the heritage it wants to uphold. Here’s why.

False History: The Old School movement focuses on a monolithic style of play and often represents this as a true revival of something that we lost, but when we go back to what people said and did it doesn’t hold up. There have been divisions in what people anted to do with D&D since the dawn of the hobby. I’m not talking about whether the Thief is a good idea or anything because that’s trivial. I’m talking about folks who thought Vancian magic sucked in the 70s. I’m talking about folks who thought D&D combat was unrealistic in the 70s. In short, people have been radically at odds with some of the Old School’s tenets about what makes for good D&D ever since there was a D&D. But they don’t count.

This definitely extends to play style. How many people played OD&D like this? The answer is more than none, but less than everyone — in fact, I’d say it was less than the majority, particularly when we look at the history of other fantasy RPGs, which were obviously designed as a reaction to D&D. In fact, there are signs in older editions that definitely deny the historical heritage of the Old School “style.” How many of you play with 20 people (the top end of the recommended number of OD&D players)? Or use a caller? Not too damn many, I’d guess.

There was no Golden Age – just people arguing about D&D, playing D&D however they wanted to. There was no consensus. This can easily be seen in Gary Gygax’s old columns, which were all about cleaving to orthodoxy because so many people thought orthodoxy sucked.

Design Conservatism: This is one folks will deny. They’ll tell you about all the new Old School gaming supplements, but I know from experience that this argument is . . . bunk. You’ll get plenty of modules, new character classes and such, but no radical deviations from a roughly imagined set of principles that is in essence “anything that smells like the ideas came from 2nd edition or later.”

As I said, I produced a number of very short supplements for OSRIC. One of them is a hack of feats for the system. The results were interesting. It sells pretty well, but customers’ feedback resembles a kind of shamefaced slinking into the porn shop, leaving with a plain paper bag clutched in hand. People wanted the remix but didn’t want anyone to necessarily think they approved of it. Openminded communities don’t make people feel this way.

Elements of the old ae defended more as articles of faith than either statements of preference of arguments from principles. For example, there’s certainly no consensus from lower-better AC proponents about why it’s better. I’ve heard plenty of them. That’s because it’s the kind of apologetics where any argument will do, as long as it advances the position. I think this is a tragedy because in my opinion (as I said earlier in this article) is that older versions of D&D are an underappreciated (by disinterested gamers and by the Old School scene) storehouse of fascinating design ideas. Faith-based appreciation gets us nowhere.

Where’s the gold in old D&D? Here’s where I think it is:

Situation, Not Principle Driven Rules: Old D&D isn’t about shoehorning a situation into a core system. It’s about developing a system for the situation. A few games preserve this idea, including the Palladium system and more recently, The Riddle of Steel and Aces & Eights.

Manipulating Game Balance for Atmosphere: This is one of the real treasures that modern RPGs have consistently stamped out. Save-or-die is part of this, but the element that stands out for me is the difference between dungeon and wilderness encounters. Dungeons are “leveled” with challenges appropriate to ether depth or party competence. Wilderness encounters (and planar) are not; it’s the luck of the draw. The wilderness comes across as the darkness amongst the “points of light” in a way the current “points of light” edition doesn’t portray nearly as deftly.

Asymmetric Design: This is a big one for me, and I’ve talked about it before.

Old Schoolers point out that many games are laden down by unnecessary rules, but they rarely express this as a positive design principle about how the rules they do have contribute to the shape of the game. Because the game’s systems are added situationally instead of the situation being ported into an existing core rule there’s no aesthetic demand for equal time for all situations. There are many modern games that are stuffed full of rules because it’s easy to create a core mechanic variation, or because the designer feels that he or she needs to rescue the game from being focused on one thing. 3e had this issue.

(In modern games, I always think of computer hacking rolls, because many games include oodles of rolls for hacking, but outside of cyberpunk gaming nobody cares. People want to know if they get the data or control the system. But it’s so easy to ask for a standard roll again and again.)

You’d be hard pressed to get OD&D fans to admit it but 4e has actually moved back in this direction by loosening up skills simply because a skill check doesn’t need the same detail as a power. Classic D&D has no skills because the basic relationship with the world uses your own problem-solving skills. The dogamtic route would be to call this part of the “essence” of the game, but that’s not true.

The essence of the game is that you only add what you need to accomplish a particular goal in an interesting fashion. Once you loosen your grip on how you expect other people to play something, the possibilities of this idea reveal themselves, and provide insights into how games evolve. Rules get added to meet a play requirement until they get too cumbersome, get streamlined by core mechanics, and then those mechanics get extensions because once you have a core mechanic you can easily be seduced into elaborating it.

(This makes me think that 4e’s nonspecific damage – you don’t have to declare subdual – is actually more OD&D than OD&D.)

Without these more fundamental points of view the Old School becomes an increasingly tight box, limited by its ideology and genre. There should be an Old School horror game. An Old School modern game. An Old School game about transhumanism. I don’t think any of these things will come from the Old School except as a reaction to something like this post.

Hm. Maybe I’ll design one.

The Halo series has a rich background and good enough plotting to provide the illusion that as Master Chief, my lone operations are part of something bigger. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for many first person games. For me, Mirror’s Edge was an example of a game with great play but a dull plot (the fascist super Parkour conspiracy!). FPS games need the tabletop RPG setting’s strengths: story events with gravity, the illusion of a bigger world and a wealthy idea mine to compensate for the fact that story mode is not always a high priority — so the more inspirations around, the easier it is to do it right. Twitchy RPGs and RPG-like FPS games are improving too, but the empty and silly aspects of many examples (like open world games) demonstrate that there’s room for improvement. So let’s explore five tabletop RPG settings that could make great FPS games.

Dungeons and Dragons: Warforged

D&D is a huge license, and its computer game implementations usually choke on the sheer size of it — and invite comparisons with tabletop play that never go well, even when the games are good. Let’s cut it back; you’re not playing a party or a guy in a party. You’re one of Eberron’s warforged, magically programmed for battle, revived from an Adamantine crypt by adventurers. and bound to serve their master because of the artifact he carries (you’ll kick that guy’s ass later). Yeah, that feels like Halo, but Halo rocks.

Advantages: The enormous D&D bestiary is yours to fight. As a warforged your unnatural toughness is believable. You have limited item slots built into your body, so no scratching your head at inventory or wondering what hyperspace your items disapear to. Even your interface can be immersive, because maybe warforged do see a tactical display: glowing runes instead of a helmet HUD. An integral crossbow with magic quarrels takes care of the ranged weapon thing to start, though you’ll find stuff as you go, too.

Vampire: Solomon Birch

You’re God’s own vampire, blessed with supernatural strength, quickness, and a series of occult rites that might be revelations from the Lord Himself, all to punish the wicked – in this case, a demonic conspiracy that runs from mortals to Kindred to . . . whoever you meet at the climax. Once again, we’ve cut back from the whole World of Darkness. Hell, there’s no character creation, but that’s okay, because Solomon Birch is enough. Just don’t have him talk too much in cutscenes.

Advantages: Birch’s Daeva clan and Lancea Sanctum sect give him the powers and motives of a tough FPS protagonist.  Celerity is bullet time. His organization provides rites that he uses as between scene buffs. Vampire: Bloodlines had some excellent concepts for making use of mortals, so let’s revisit those, too.

Aeternal Legends: Knights

Yes, I went and did it – suggested a game that I publish in a blatant example of bias! It’s a good thing that Aeternal Legends (yes, a link, but I publish it because I like it!) really does work for this. Now unlike the other examples I wouldn’t stick to one character, but would go with a selection of four preset Strength Sphere users (Knights): one for each Clade. This restriction justifies fighting ability and means it’s easy to tweak story mode for each character. The Ministry charges you with destroying  one of the Swords of Yesterday – but it’s in the hand of a rising Dark Lord. Along the way you’ll fight subway pirates, slaves of the clockwork realm and evil Legends.

Advantages: Aeternal Legends‘ power system is easy to adapt to FPS play and would create definite changes in tactics based on your choice of Knight – something that can be spun into team-based PVP, too. The setting is at once familiar and includes enough hidden world stuff to let you design wierd and wonderful levels without straining credulity or lining a place with crates.

Talislanta: Thrall

Talislanta is kind of the Dying Earth’s meathead, metalhead cousin — that’s a compliment, by the way. It may not be as witty, but it is quietly imaginative and satisfyingly rewards brute force in a way Jack Vance’s decadent wonderland shouldn’t. You’ll play a Thrall: a hulking, tattooed soldier that moves from galdiatorial challenges to swashbuckling across the decks of windships, guided along the way by one of the mysterious Black Savants.

Advantages: Thralls are a warrior people, so suspension of disbelief is built in. You’ll believe that a tattooed man can kill 100 ice giants! You’d have a signature spikey close combat weapon (the Garde) and enough strange magic to supply any FPS mainstay. Maybe you can even commandeer windships and mounts. But in the end, the sheer variety of the setting and its strange but accessible nature makes Talislanta a winning license. This isn’t just look and feel, either; every group in the setting is chock full of story motivations, from Quan nobles after a cheap thrill to the Xambrians and their big grudge against wizards/Toquarans. (In fact, Xambrians are misunderstood violent loners, making them good FPS types, too.)

Lessons Learned

I got a few ideas out of writing the above. I’m coming at this as an FPS player who vastly prefers story play, so take it in that context.

1) Don’t Eat the Whole Sandwich – But Let ‘Em See the Tomatos

In each entry I cut down the options not just out of respect for the format, but because many things have impact in backstory and suggestion, not integration. When I’m playing Master Chief Halo lets me know enough to think of a whole infrastructure backing me up, and a rich setting that helps me ignore the restrictions of each level. Cutting down to one or a few preset characters also provides immediate motivation (I know my job and perspective) without making any of it seem petty and isolated from the greater world.

2) Settings Should Inspire Neat Levels

Crates and  shopping mall features are the bane of modern-era and futuristic levels. Every setting should inspire interesting level designs. (This is weak in my Vampire choice, but let’s plug some underground Belial’s Brood temples in there). D&D‘s assets are self-evident. Aeternal Legends has lots of neat hidden worlds a la Hellboy II and Harry Potter.

3) We’ve Got to Get Bigger Guns!

You need an excuse for interesting ranged weapons. Modern and futuristic games have this in the bag, but it requires imagination to apply this to fantasy worlds. Warforged can get Predator-like shoulder crossbows, so they work. Talislanta has lots of oddball magic – enough for gun substitutes, though I admit it’s the weakest entry in the list. Of course, you could get by this with ranged magic as well.

4) One Cool Thing Per Character

Every protagonist should have one cool thing they can do by virtue of their background. Knights can be super accurate, bust through armor and so on, depending on the character’s Clade (fantasy “race”). Solomon Birch has magic and Disciplines and is easily the best example in the article. Our warforged protagonist can magically upgrade him/her/itself. I must admit I missed the boat with the Thrall, though.

That’s it. What tabletop RPG do you think would make for a great FPS?

• Played Out: The Cthulhu Mythos
• Play Again: Satanic Evil

Yes, the Mythos is literature. We all love it. And if you love something, set it free from numerous RPG rehashes. maybe Ken Hite can kep doing it but everyone else should just stop. And don’t do that faux-Lovecraft thing where you bang your head on the keyboard to get random sounding names. (Mage: The Ascension, I’m looking at you!)

But whatever happened to the Devil? Not the post-Miltonian by way of Gaiman sympathetic dude, but Satan, the ultimate BBEG? Nobody’s used him as a threat in a while, and gamers, frightened of the 80s come again, generally shy away from classic Old Scratch. Let’s bring him back in all his modern pop culture-confused medieval-Baptist mishmash glory.

• Played Out: Ever So Aaaalieen Faeries
• Play Again: Fairy Tales

Yes yes nerds, Faeries are alien and strange and crap – except that this whole thing is now a huge cliche that gamers expect. My work on Changeling was a subtle critique of it. In it, the Gentry can’t be incomprehensible because they’re made of stories – and incomprehensible stories are dead stories.

Fairy tales, where magic is a collection of whimsical special cases and fairies aren’t otherplanar gods but just well hidden, haven’t been used so much. The challenge is making them relevant and not merely aping a romantic childhood approach. Phil Brucato’s Deliria gave it a try but was hampered by a stream of consciousness presentation and odd system. There’s room for a new game.

• Played Out: D&D Clones
• Play Again: Second Wave-Style “Realistic” Fantasy RPGs

There are just too many dungeon fantasy games out there, and none of them will ever beat D&D. At most, they’ll be a valued second fiddle.

On the other hard, there’s room for new games in the tradition of Harn and Runequest. I know we all like to pretend that Runequest was all about Glorantha, but I was there nerds – it’s about nasally arguing over “realism.” You can’t have true realism, but the type of verisimilitude in these designs has been missing from recent RPGs. There’s definitely a demand for it.

• Played Out: You’re Possessed!
• Play Again: Psychics

This one is leveled at White Wolf – with love. Back in the Old World of Darkness, every other supernatural type was born of some form of sophisticated possession, with fae souls and Tem-Akhs and all that. I think Geist (which I worked on) is the last decent implementation to be had before it’s time to say goodbye to this one.

On the other hand, nobody’s done a good psychics game in a long time. Psychic powers are a tradition in occult literature, SF and some fantasy, have lots of associated myths and are even described in gameable power chunks. Many games have ancillary rules for them, but nobody’s put the spoon benders front and center in a while.

• Played Out: Oddball Kitchen Sink Fantasy
• Play Again: Fantasy East Asia

Exalted did the job well. Eberron? Well, it was a handy place to dump ideas, I guess. Dictionary of Mu marked the final degeneration from “trend” to “affectation” and finally, “masturbation.” By and large, strangeness for strangeness’ sake (mixed with pulp pastiche as part of a male-nerd thing) is getting monotonous. “It has a noble title as long as your arm! Mighty thews. Steam power. Spider vaginas!” Yeah, just shut up.

Games set in a region based on the Chinese cultural sphere (places where Chinese customs, religions and written languages had a powerful influence) have never been done well. They’re either too blandly historical, even when the history is violently remixed, or you have Legend of the Five Rings which drops many worthy elements for its CCG-based setup. There needs to be something Lord of the Rings-like – a mythic-historical work that doesn’t try to sell exoticism within the millieu.